Miss Julia Hits the Road (26 page)

“Oh, yes,” Hazel Marie agreed. “If anybody’ll do it, she will. In fact, I bet she’ll be the first one to ride with J. D.”

“And the others won’t want to be outdone,” I said. “Except Emma Sue. I can’t imagine she’d do anything that’s not church-related, but I had to ask her to keep her from crying all over town because she was left out.” Emma Sue was known for her propensity for crying whenever her feelings got hurt, which meant she overflowed about every other minute, since her tender feelings were so easily damaged.

“Well, I don’t know. She might surprise you, especially if you present it so that she can see it as an evangelistic enterprise.” Hazel Marie took her lip between her teeth, and began to think. “You know, there is such a thing as a Christian Motorcycle Club. I don’t know exactly what they do, other than ride together like any other club, but maybe they go somewhere and preach when they get there.”

“Oh, excellent, Hazel Marie. Let’s tell her that the riders she’ll meet all need to hear the Gospel.” I paused, considering the notion. “And I don’t have a doubt in the world that it’s true. The thing about it is, we need both her and Norma Cantrell. If the two of them won’t bring every Presbyterian out of the woodwork, I don’t know what will. A few Baptists and Methodists, too, I expect, just to see the spectacle.”

“What will Pastor Ledbetter think?”

“He’s Emma Sue’s problem, not mine. Thank goodness. Anyway, my thinking is that each one of these women has contact with others who might volunteer to ride, too. Half the garden club will sign on if LuAnne and Helen Stroud do. And if Emma Sue rides, well, just think how many women in the church would follow her lead. And who knows, her example could bring in some other preachers’ wives in town. Then,” I went on, sighing as I did so, “there’s Mildred Allen. I had to invite her over because she knows everybody in town and would bad-mouth us if I left her out. She won’t ride, though.”

“She might,” Hazel Marie said. “If we could find a bike with a wide enough seat for her to fit into. Well,” she said, as she picked up the phone, “let me call J. D. I declare, I hope he doesn’t think I’m forgetting about his past, just because we need him to help us out in the present.”

I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t know what she hoped to accomplish by playing hard-to-get. I mean, the man couldn’t go back and undo two marriages. Well, any more than he’d already done with two divorces. But the doorbell rang, interfering with any advice I was about to give.

We both went to the door, to be greeted by a young man who identified himself as the delivery man from Perkins Drugs.

“You must have the wrong house,” I said, wondering who on our street was sick enough to need a delivered prescription. “I didn’t order anything.”

“No’m, I’m supposed to deliver this box to this address.” He handed me a large, flat box wrapped in white drugstore paper.

I thanked him and turned to Hazel Marie. “Who could be sending us something from the drugstore? Maybe it’s for you, Hazel Marie.”

“Not me,” she said. “Maybe Lillian ordered something.”

“Let’s go see,” I said, and we both trooped into the kitchen, where Lillian denied ordering anything.

“Jus’ open it up, an’ see who it for,” she said.

So I did, and it nearly did me in.

“A Whitman’s Sampler!” Hazel Marie exclaimed. “And it must be the biggest one they make. I love this candy. May I try a piece?”

I nodded as she searched for a caramel and held out the box to Lillian. I was busy looking for the name of the sender, although there could be little doubt as to who it was from.

“Who’s it from, Miss Julia?” Hazel Marie asked. “And don’t hide it from us.”

“Mr. Sam, he mus’ be switchin’ off of flowers,” Lillian said, her gold tooth shining. “Maybe he think candy sweeten you up some.”

I opened the enclosed envelope, read the card, and flopped into a chair. “This is absolutely unbelievable,” I said, patting my breast in my agitation. “I’m sending it back right this minute.”

I gathered the wrapping paper, then stopped as Hazel Marie held up a piece of candy with a bite already taken out. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I’m real sorry, Miss Julia.”

“Me, too,” Lillian said around a mouthful of chocolate. “Guess you got to keep it, seein’ we already into it. You don’t want to hurt Mr. Sam’s feelin’s nohow.”

I leaned my head on my hand and tried to calm my rapid breathing. “Sam didn’t send it,” I said, realizing that I was going to need their help to handle a new and completely unsuitable suitor who was looming on the horizon. “Listen to this.”

I unfolded the card and read:

“Oh, Lord,” I said, my head sinking down on the table. “Have you ever heard anything so awful? I could just expire right here and now. Oh, the shame of it, being courted by that repulsive old man. What in the world am I going to do?”

“Just ignore him, Miss Julia,” Hazel Marie advised. “He’ll soon get the message and quit bothering you.”

I looked up at her, frowning. That’s what she’d been doing to Mr. Pickens, in the hope that he’d get the opposite message.

Lillian reached for another piece of candy. “Look like to me, we ought to eat all we want, then send him the empty box an’ say we had our fill an’ don’t want no more.”

Hazel Marie bent over the box, deciding what to try next. “Wonder what Sam’s going to say when he hears about this,” she said, as if she were talking to herself.

Lillian started laughing, and I threw up my hands. “Sam wouldn’t care one way or another,” I said, and started out of the room.

“I think he ought to know he has a rival, don’t you, Lillian?” Hazel Marie said, as I took myself off.

With Hazel Marie’s words still ringing in my mind, I went upstairs to face an unpleasant task that simply had to be done. I sat down at my desk and, sighing, drew out an informal with my initials engraved on the front. I declare, I hated writing a thank-you note to someone I couldn’t stand, but one does what one knows is the proper thing to do. Even if one would like to wring the recipient’s neck.

Gathering my thoughts and taking pen in hand, I wrote:

I signed my name with a flourish and a sigh of relief at having the chore over and done with. After addressing and stamping the envelope, I congratulated myself on doing the correct thing, difficult though it had been, and also for writing a formal and dispassionate note that ought to serve to cool Thurlow Jones’s jets, as Little Lloyd would say.

“One thing is for sure,” I mumbled, wondering what I had done to be on the receiving end of such unwanted attentions, “I am not eating any of that candy.”

When the phone rang on my desk, I picked it up before Lillian could get it downstairs.

“Julia?” Sam said. “How are you today?”

“I’m fine, Sam.” Well, as fine as I could be after my meeting with Clarence Gibbs, and after receiving an unwanted box of candy, but he didn’t need to know about either one. “How are you?”

“Not so good.” He breathed long and deep, and I began to worry that something else was wrong with him. “Julia,” he went on before I could ask about it, “I’ve been thinking about that big donation from Thurlow Jones. He’s an odd bird if there ever was one, and I hope he didn’t get the wrong idea when you went to see him.”

“I don’t know what kind of wrong idea he could’ve gotten, Sam,” I said. “My request to him was straightforward enough.”

“Well, but you don’t know him like I do.”

“That’s what you keep telling me, but you don’t need to warn me about him.” I rubbed a certain spot on my back side, but I wasn’t about to mention that. “I’m well aware of what he’s capable of, but so far he’s been nothing but generous and thoughtful. Why, Sam, he even sent us a box of candy this morning.” I don’t know why I told him that. I hadn’t intended to; it just popped out.

“Candy!” Sam said, in a voice raised louder than I’d ever heard it. “What is that fool doing sending you candy? Send it back, Julia. You can’t encourage him or you’ll never be rid of him.”

“I can’t do that, Sam,” I said, a little smile playing around my mouth as I realized that Hazel Marie’s assessment just might be right. “It would be so ungracious of me. Besides, a lady can accept certain attentions without implying any reciprocation. And, if I started sending things back, I’d have to employ a whole messenger service to return all the other gifts I’ve received.”

“Who else has been sending you gifts? Julia, listen to me, you can’t go around accepting things from every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It gives the wrong impression.”

“Oh, Sam,” I said, glancing out my window to see some of the ladies coming up the walk. “You worry too much. Look, I have guests coming in, so I have to go.”

He didn’t much like it, especially since I now had him thinking that every unattached male in town was showering me with presents. Well, just as Hazel Marie’d said, it wouldn’t hurt him to think he wasn’t the only one in the running.

When the doorbell rang downstairs, I prepared myself to meet my guests. I had to show them by my comportment that participating in this endeavor would not in the least be unusual or inappropriate, while hiding the fact that to me it was simply outrageous. It was imperative for my peace of mind that I talk them into signing up for the thrill of their lives, so I wouldn’t be the only one making a fool of herself. Misery loves company, you know.

It wasn’t the ladies at the door, but Mr. Pickens, who’d arrived much earlier than we’d expected. Hazel Marie had let him in, and they stood together just staring at each other. I did a little staring, too.

Lord, the man exuded masculinity and lemon cologne in enough quantities to make my head swim. Leather does something exceptional to the men who wear it, especially when made up into tight-fitting pants and heavy boots with silver buckles. Because it was an Indian summer day, as he’d pointed out—although I thought it was just an excuse—he wore only a leather vest over a T-shirt with the sleeves cut out. I couldn’t keep my eyes off those highly visible muscles and, particularly, that ugly scar on his upper arm. To have something like that made me wonder if his profession of looking for missing persons and tracking down insurance fraud was much more dangerous than I’d thought. Or maybe one of his wives had lit into him, leaving something to remember her by.

And, Lord, when he turned I saw a tattoo on his other arm—some kind of bird. An eagle, maybe. Or a chicken. I’ll tell you, with all that ornamentation, Mr. Pickens cut a dashing and somewhat dangerous-looking figure.

He had come riding up on what he called his Harley Softail, a most inappropriate name in my opinion, and I hoped he wouldn’t mention it again. He did manage his machine, however, with a great deal more skill than Sam had displayed on his.

As the ladies arrived, each pair of eyes popped out at the sight of Mr. Pickens’s unclothed arm muscles. LuAnne immediately started flapping her hands, as she does whenever she gets excited, and at one point I thought she was going to reach out and rub her hand over his scar. LuAnne tended to lose her head when she was in the presence of a certain virile type of man. But, given Leonard’s usual somnolent state, I guess she had to make up for it somewhere.

Mr. Pickens took all their wide-eyed stares in stride as if he were used to that kind of adulation. He was just as charming as he could be, greeting them and complimenting each one so that he quickly overcame any trepidations they might’ve felt. They were so taken with him, in fact, that they hardly partook of Lillian’s offerings from the kitchen, standing around him and asking questions about the motorcycle parked in my front yard.

Every once in a while, he’d look over somebody’s head and wink at Hazel Marie, letting her know that she was his one and only. I would’ve had my doubts, if it’d been me.

I finally got them seated and quickly presented our idea of the leading ladies of the town riding with an experienced biker in order to raise money for the Willow Lane folks. I explained how we’d get sponsors, spelled out in glorious detail how exhilarating and healthy a ride would be, and how much good we all could do.